Neanderpundit

Returns tomorrow. At undisclosed location. More pictures of cameras and guns to follow. And airplanes, and dead birds.

Boxing day I left the house on a mission. Prior to Christmas I had visited our local gunshop Blythes and saw an FN A-5 in it’s original pigskin hard case. It even had the oiler etc. but it had had a Cutts compensator installed. they wanted $499 for it but I figured I could work them down to $400, which I figured was a good price for a real FN with the Herstal buttplate. I could find an unmolested barrel for it easily enough, and the existing barrel with the Cutts removed and a Trijicon front sight would make a great and effective “Trench” gun after the Remington pattern. hell, I might even do 3 gun with it.
And it was gone. To tell the truth, I was a bit relieved. I figure I can find one any time, they;re cheap as dirt, and the right one will still come along some day.

The Savage 99 with the non functional compass in the stock is still there after 3 years.

In the “expensive” gunroom they had a “Clearance” table. Everything on it $25. There were three of the vinyl type Browning hardcases, two for Auto-5’s and one for an Auto 22. Good shape, but since i don’t have either…

And there was a canvas hardcase for a Merkel O/U. It had sustained a bit of water damage but it was basically sound. It looks like this (Click to embiggenate if you desire)

The abuse it will get from me hauling it around will be worse than anything else that has already happened to it. The lining on the inner lid was stained by rust from the barrel and the imitation vinyl Merkel trade label was pretty sad. So a trip to JoAnn fabrics and $4 later, and I had a strip of baize adequate to the job.

it’s a great fit for the LeFever I restocked last year, and i have ordered a proper oil bottle and a cleaning rod kit to match, and it will stay that way the rest of it’s life. Not a bad day, for $25. And my pin money account is still filling up.

I have found a place where I can get a duplicate of an original LeFever trade label, I may just stick it in the lid.

So I thought I’d post one of mine.

This is a contaflex super. It was given me by a dear friend and it is a real cornerstone of my collection.

First, because of it’s pristine condition. The leather shows some scuffing but the camera itself is flawless.

Second, because of it’s design. There is one electronic component, and it is a Selenium light meter. You set your film speed with a dial, and outside of that dial is a knob. Match the needle with a notch on the camera, and this can be done from outside of the camera or through the viewfinder, and once you did that you could change your aperture and the shutter speed followed it, allowing you to tweak for depth of field or subject motion without modifying the original meter setting.

And it does this all with GEARS. Everything in this camera works mechanically, and it is a marvel. I am afraid to know what it looks like inside. I am told by people who know it is at least four times as complex, mechanically, as a good Swiss Chronograph, and the thing that kept them from costing a million dollars was the gears were penny sized instead of nonpareil size. As it was, the Contaflex Super was a great deal, costing only about $170. In an age when the median income was around $5k a year, when a really nice new car was $2k.

but people bought them, because they were compact and well made and easy to use. And they had one other feature that is the final reason I treasure mine.

That lovely bit of glass up front. The lens was made in Jena by the firm started by Cal Zeiss itself. The lens- that lovely 4 element Tessar, designed by Paul Rudolph, the man who invented the anastigmat. What’s an anastigmat? I’m glad you asked.

A single lens will distort at the edges. This means the bigger a lens is and the thicker it is in the midddle the more distortion there will be, and it will even distort different wavelengths of light differently. Rudolph was known for combining Crown glass and flint glass, which each have “Astigmatism” so to speak, but together, when combined properly, their deficits cancel one another out. They knew this because of the Abbe sine condition, a theoretical instrument developed by Ernst Abbe while he was working with Carl Zeis at Jena.

Using the groundwork laid by Zeiss and Abbe, Paul Rudolph developed the Tessar not just to be a great, distortion free lens, but the back three elements are common to several focal lengths. So the Contaflex series of cameras (Which had leaf shuttters in the lens like a Hasselblad) could simply have the front element replaced with a different one to acquire different focal lengths. So there were half a dozen lenses available (Including a stereo adapter!) that bayonetted into the front of the camera in place of the front element of the lens, giving you a distortion free 35mm lens (One of the best in the business, still is) or a 135mm telephoto, or a 75 mm portrait lens

You can take a picture of an 11 x 17 piece of graph paper with this camera, make an 11×17 print and lay them together and NOT TELL THE DIFFERENCE. I have done this myself. The glass is, for all practical purposes, flawless. And this is why even though other cameras are commanding almost no value at all, the better cameras with Zeiss lenses are still pulling down some scratch. Leicas. Hasselblads. Rolleis. Alpas.

I still have my rollei, though I never let anyone see me use it. I lust after blads, and one day I intend to stand on the plains of central Africa again. I will wake in the morning and dress from my Hartmann steamer wardrobe, put on my Stetson Moab, shoulder the double, and walk out onto the African Savanna carrying a 500 CM or at least a Super Wide C.

hey, a guy has to have dreams.